Letters: BGCT pastors reconnecting to national Baptist groups

I love the BGCT, its people, its ministries … the CLC, disaster relief, Buckner, its seminaries and universities. Now it risks the integrity of all of this.

In “How disconnected BGCT pastors can reconnect with national Baptist groups,” Ross Shelton urges reconciliation with the SBC & SBTC but “reform” of CBF. BGCT pastors should “call the CBF to stop their current theological trajectory and return to evangelical roots.” (CBF’s “current theological trajectory,” by the way, is local church autonomy, an essential Baptist principle.) The BGCT was saved from this authoritarian attitude — that such pastors exclusively know the mind of God — in the 1990s.

He also suggests that “BGCT colleges and seminaries agree to hire … a few professors … recently educated by an SBC seminary and/or who are supportive of the current direction of the SBC.” This undermines Logsdon and Truett Seminaries, which have faithfully adhered to Baptist principles for over two decades, by infesting them with the teachings of seminaries that have consistently trampled on those principles.

The BGCT’s “unity and diversity” is an illusion — unity at the expense of diversity of thought. Baptist unity, historically, has not demanded conformity. Two years ago, the BGCT kicked some “family” members to the curb, imposing the majority interpretation of a few cherry-picked scriptures on its churches. If Shelton’s suggestions — as I suspect — reflect the thinking of many BGCT pastors, the BGCT appears to be traveling the road to Fundamentalism and the SBC/SBTC.